Borderlines (37 page)

“The child that fell from the bridge, the toddler that supposedly shook off his companion and went running to his death on the streambed below.

The child that was actually murdered, and whose murder you conspired to cover up.” “You’re bluffing.” “Really? Did you think Rennie would keep that information to himself, a good-ol’-boy redneck like that? Hell, the first thing he did was share some of those women with his best friend in East Burke. Discretion wasn’t his long suit-he had you by the balls and it tickled him pink.” Sarris dropped his eyes to the floor.

His hands were on his knees, his feet flat on the ground. It was the posture of a far older man, browbeaten and tired, whose resistance had all but drained from his soul. He let out a long sigh. The bluff had worked. “That child was mentally retarded, did you know that?” “Yes, I did.” “In previous centuries, its death would have been seen as a blessing, God calling His own back to His breast. And in the animal world, it wouldn’t have survived its first day of life. We have surely turned the world on its ear, we civilized men.” His voice was bitter.

“Who killed it?” I asked softly.

“His own mother-so hopeful she’d produce something decent and pure, and so shattered when it turned out defective, like herself.” Considering the cast of characters we had, that could only be one person. The realization weighed in my chest like a stone. “Julie Wingate. ” He nodded.

I thought of the monstrosity of Sarris forcing Julie to have sex with his own tormentor. The twisted psychosis that would have seen poetic justice in that arrangement could only have belonged to a colossal egomaniac. It was ironic indeed that the same ego had precluded Sarris from simply handing Julie over to the police at the time she killed her child, thereby washing his hands of the entire affair and making himself look like a responsible citizen to boot. The high price of playing God was that when you stumbled, you brought your world down with you.

%238 I did some more mental mathematics, comparing the age of Julie’s child to when her parents had said she’d first told them of her “new friends,” almost three years ago.

“Julie was pregnant when she joined the Order.” Sarris was still studying the floor. “Yes. I believe Fox overdid it a bit in the recruiting.” “She was living with Fox when he died. I thought you discouraged that kind of attachement.” He shrugged. “He was a close friend, more of a cofounder than a member of the Order. He fell in love with her; I wasn’t going to argue. I have to admit, though, I didn’t see the attraction.” “Where is Julie now?” “I let her go,” he said simply.

I now understood Sarris’s odd mood when we’d first entered his house.

Perhaps Spinney’s little chat earlier had made an impression. By letting Julie go, Sarris had finally rid himself of his major problem, or so he must have thought until we’d returned to his doorstep.

“Where did she go?” Smith asked, speaking for the first time. “I don’t know. I let her loose like a minnow in the ocean, so that she might just disappear forever.” “How did she leave?” Hamilton asked.

Sarris looked up at him, his brow slightly furrowed. “I gave her the keys to one of those cars outside.” “Would you know which one?” “A white VW bus.” Sarris seemed totally disinterested in us now, and perhaps even in himself. The sense of caution which had made him guarded when we’d first begun to chat had vanished utterly, and he seemed content to answer whatever questions were asked of him. Hamilton and Spinney put handcuffs behind his back and escorted him from the room. “Well, that’s good news,” Smith muttered to himself. “What is?” “That she took one of those junkers. They’ve been sitting around for so long, they must be half-rotted inside. I doubt she’ll get very far before somethings breaks.” “Then we can ask her who killed Bruce Wingate.” Smith shot me a surprised look. “You don’t think Sarris did it?” “No, I don’t. I think he’s as much in the dark as we are.” %239 I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t even bother undressing. I just lay on the bed with a blanket over me, staring at the ceiling and playing it over in my mind, time and time again. The picture, as such, was almost complete. Like museum restorers cleaning an old and valuable painting, we’d painstakingly rubbed away the obfuscating layers. But what we saw now was confusing-abstract art where we’d been expecting realism. The missing element, we were convinced, had to be Julie, a fractured, self-abused psychotic. At the end of all our rational deliberations, of all our archaeological thoroughness, we were reduced to combing the countryside in search of a pathetically sick girl with a brain full of secrets.

When Spinney called to say they’d found her vehicle, I was in my coat and out the door in under five minutes. Riding with Spinney through the predawn blackness, watching the icy sheen of the pavement racing beneath our headlights, I wondered what sad conclusion we were rushing to meet.

“So where’re we headed?” “Graniteville, near Barre. Our guess is she was sticking to the backroads-Route 5 to 2; Route 2 to 302 via the Perkinsville town highway; something like that, maybe even more roundabout. No way of telling where she was headed in the long run, but she ran out of luck near Graniteville. Busted radiator hose; Smith was right.” “So she’s on foot?” “That’s what we’re going to find out.

Bishop’s ahead of us with the others. I figured I ought to call you, considering.” “Thanks.” “Bishop’s got a dog with him, and some of Julie’s clothes from Sarris’s place-maybe they can pick up a scent.” We drove in silence for a while. Graniteville is aptly named, being the center for a handful of huge granite quarries, some of which have been producing tor well over a hundred years. I’d heard somewhere that if demand for the stone continued, the whole area could be productive for hundreds of more years. I didn’t see how they could miss, considering that much of their stone ended up marking graves.

There was only the slightest hint of predawn grey in the sky when we pulled up next to a cluster of marked and unmarked police cars by %240

the side of a narrow, black-topped country road. As soon as I got out, I saw John Bishop, surrounded by men with flashlights, holding a wad of clothing to the nose of an excited bloodhound. Keeping the clothes in place, Bishop then pulled the dog over to the driver’s side of a rusty, battered VW bus.

“Why not just track her?” I asked Spinney as we approached the group.

“Take too long. The engine was still a little warm when we found it.

Unless she got another ride, she can’t be too far away.” Bishop released the hound to the end of a ten-foot leash. Everybody stood back as the now whining dog darted feverishly back and forth along the ditch bordering the road. As his lithe body flitted in and out of the bobbing flashlight beams, I thought of what it must be like in Julie’s position, hearing voices, seeing those stabbing points of light, and being aware that a dog was on her scent. Years earlier, I’d heard of how rabbit hunters in Scotland released ferrets into burrows to encourage the residents to flee into a hail of welcoming buckshot. The trick, apparently, was to avoid hitting the one rabbit that would have the ferret firmly attached to the back of its neck. Despite the obvious differences, I still didn’t envy Julie her position.

The dog finally took off into the brush on the other side of the ditch, and with an increased babble of voices, the men crashed in after it.

Spinney jumped the ditch and looked back at me. “Coming?” “I’ll be there.” He waved and vanished into the gloom and the undergrowth. To be honest, I hoped I wasn’t there; there were too many undertones to this kind of pursuit to make me want to join in. Instead, mostly to fight off the early morning chill, I walked up the road a piece, playing my flashlight along the side, not looking for anything in particular.

Eventually, I came across a gravel road heading off to the same side the tracking party had taken. The dust showed the impressions of many wide heavy tires-and a single set of boot prints.

Earlier, off Lemon Road, John Bishop had muttered a pet adage, “There are no sharp edges in nature,” meaning that it didn’t take long for a print’s outline to soften on its way back to becoming undisturbed soil.

The prints I was looking at were very sharp indeed. I hesitated a moment, wondering if I should call the others, but they were already tracking Julie. What I had before me were probably the tracks of some quarryman showing up early for work, or maybe a supervisor or watchman.

I walked along the road for a quarter mile or so and came to a chain-link gate with a sign proclaiming, CELESTIAL %241 STONE

COMPANY-ANDREWS PIT. NO TRESPASSING-VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

The sign seemed to confirm my doubts.

I tugged at the lock uniting the chain that held the gate together. It was closed. I pushed at the wire mesh. It swung back a few feet, widening the gap between the two halves of the gate. I looked at the gap appraisingly, contemplating the challenge. Then I saw where the footprints had slipped through ahead of me.

I tried fitting through the gap, with laughable results. I pulled off my coat and sweater and tossed them through ahead of me. If I didn’t make it this time, I’d freeze to death-the ultimate diet. I did make it, though, at the cost of several buttons, and quickly put my clothes back on.

The footprints immediately vanished to the side of the road, back to the safety of the brush, so I stuck to the road, going on the hunch that whoever had come this way had paralleled my route. I knew this still qualified as a wild-goose chase, but my interest was now no longer idle.

Kids on a dare usually travel in packs; it helps holster the courage and affords ready witnesses for later bragging at bull sessions. This had been very clearly one set of tracks, and that, for obvious reasons, was intriguing. Furthermore, I could still hear my colleagues, though faintly, and they sounded like they, too, were headed in roughly the same direction.

About a half mile later, I came to a clearing, bordered by buildings ahead, and trees on either side. It was a large area, big enough to easily turn an 18-wheeler without going into reverse. Yielding to impulse, I walked over to the edge of the gravel and began looking for the footprints to reappear. I followed the perimeter of the parking area to the most distant spot from the buildings, and there I found them again. I began to feel like a bloodhound myself, it didn’t much matter that I probably would end up finding some teenager smoking pot.

There was a large pile of dusty, broken granite blocks that met the bordering trees at a ninety-degree angle. The tracks led me up the pile and over to the other side, and there, glowing slightly in the dawn’s struggling half-light, was a sight that damn near made my heart stop.

It was a huge, round pit, the size and depth of a small canyon, about one thousand feet across, and some four hundred feet deep, yawning and utterly silent. The walls were a series of fifty-foot wide, vertical grooves, interspaced with similarly wide buttresses-what mountain climbers call chimneys and ribs. At twenty-foot intervals, roughly a third of these chimneys and ribs were cut with narrow horizontal terraces, on which ladders had been placed as escape routes so the granite workers could use them in emergencies. Some of the %242

terraces interconnected, but most did not. Here and there, usually in the grooves, especially deep terraces had been cut to allow for the placement of large pieces of equipment-generators, winches, elevator boxes for workers to ride up and down, a*id small wooden foremen shacks.

For the most part, however, the terraces were as narrow as ledges, barely five feet wide.

Around the pit’s edge were about ten towering pole cranes, all harnessed to each other by an overhead spider’s web of steel cables. It gave me the creepy feeling of having an oppressive presence bearing down on me, like a huge, half-seen hand ready to flatten me and flick me into the hole. Instinct told me to quickly extinguish my flashlight and to move as quietly as possible. I crawled down the other side of the pile and reached a broad strip of flat rock that marked the edge. Moving slowly, a foot at a time, sensing my way partly by the growing daylight and partly by feel, I moved toward the pit. The edge, when I finally got there, was as sharp as a knife-one inch beyond where my shoe rested on flat granite, the cliff dropped to some barely visible milky green water about four hundred feet below. The sight was so destabilizing I had to quickly sit down to regain my balance. My stomach was slightly queasy.

Getting onto my hands and knees, I forced myself to look over the edge.

Some twenty feet below me was the first of the narrow ledges, but its ladder was lying flat, instead of connecting it to where I was. It had either fallen with amazing precision, or it had been taken down to prevent pursuit.

I scanned the walls for any activity, but there was nothing. The water-streaked pale gray rock, utterly motionless, seemed to let off a light of its own. This apparent inner glow was in gloomy contrast to the line of dark trees above, and the opaque green water far below. The place was as still as the graveyards it supplied.

Why come here? I thought. I looked to my right, to where the sun was trying to assert some presence. This wasn’t an entirely enclosed circular pit-to the east was a narrow opening to the valley below. If someone had been forced to stop here, say by a blown radiator hose, escape by road would be highly risky, especially so near to a vehicle being sought by police. Similarly, cutting across country wouldn’t work too well; the woods were thick and, conversely, the area was much more populated than the Northeast Kingdom.

But here was a sort of deranged logic-you could scale down the sides of the pit, dumping ladders as you went, and leave through the opening to the east. Progress would be rapid, direct pursuit would be severely handicapped, and you’d end up miles away by road from where the incriminating vehicle had been left. If the bus was found quickly, %243